Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Jess Carrivick’s show opens with a montage of adorable home videos she and her brother Jack shot as children, between the years of 1995 and 2001. 

Things have not changed much, she’s still playing dress-up and pretending to be other people – and indeed the whole premise of this hour is that it’s a screening of short films up for an award.

First up is a documentary about an American jazz legend’s last ever gig. She’s the epitome of a  sassy New York dame, dropping none-too-subtle double entendres and flirtatiously berating us for being ‘naughty, naughty, naughty’ for getting them. The same catchphrase comes out in some cheeky back-and-forth with the audience member selected to be her pianist.

Showbusiness is a common thread for many of Carrivick’s creations, either actually or through thwarted ambitions. That’s certainly the case for her second character, a frustrated middle-class mum, clinging on to a brief former career as an actress that peaked as the understudy on a Rowan Atkinson show. Still reliving those past ‘glories’ she’s pushy about getting the best performance from her daughter at the school play to try to recreate those days vicariously.

Then there’s the parody dance movie, Ballet You Slay, which sends up every cliche of the genre, with a protagonist suppressing her love of dance after her mother suffered a bizarre death – only for her talent to be noticed by an over-inquisitive ‘lowly janitor’ who brings her out of her shell. 

Almost all of Carrivick’s characters get two acts, getting a satisfying resolution to  the situations set up in the first sketch. Thus the seafaring chap isolating in a lighthouse for fear of what contact with the water will do to him in The Captain’s Curse (a parody of the Willem Dafoe/Robert Pattinson film The Lighthouse) eventually takes the plunge – and then sings about his transformation in a outlandish shanty you never heard on Fisherman’s Friends.  

Connections are made between some of  the scenes and characters, though they don’t make much sense if you take the mini film festival premise at anything like face value. And there’s a running joke about porn and pawns that’s very laboured – based on the child Carrivicks’ misunderstanding, allegedly –  but culminates in a list of chess grandmasters with stupidly innuendo-laden names, which is enjoyably daft.

For Your Consideration works well as a showcase for Carrivick’s acting talents. For all their peculiarities the characters’ quirks are a bit too low-impact for life beyond these four walls but playing them relatively realistically is effective, and she has an understated  charisma that comes to the fore in her interactions with the audience, particularly the cinema usher always ‘shushing’ us. Being told you shouldn’t laugh is always likely to make you more likely to want to.

About two-thirds of the way through we are also given a reason for this show, a tribute to her late father Gareth, who was genuinely overlooked by Bafta, which adds to the charming sentimentality of the home videos. Her tribute to the largely-forgotten actress Glynis Johns – the Sister Suffragette showtune she sang in Mary Poppins – is a less organic addition, but a fun way to end a fun hour.

• Chortle’s coverage of sketch and multi-character acts at the Edinburgh Fringe is supported by (but not influenced by) the Seven Dials Playhouse. Read more

Review date: 21 Aug 2025
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Gilded Balloon Patter House